This is no way to lead a free world

The failure of the American people to understand why their country is hated in so much of the world is the most dangerous collective ignorance in global politics. The President entertains no doubts. Hatred of America, he told fellow citizens, is based on the fact that America is free and prosperous. This crude self-deception conceals the unpalatable truth. America is not hated because Americans are free. She is hated because she is perceived to pursue policies that deny that freedom to others, most obviously, today, the Palestinian Arabs.

It is a tragic irony that the American virtue most coveted by a hostile world - namely liberty before the law - has now been ruthlessly suppressed, not by Islamic fanatics but by the President himself. On 13 November, by presidential diktat, with no reference to Congress or the Supreme Court, George W Bush ordained a system of arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, secret trial and extreme punishment which would have impressed the Inquisition.

In Britain libertarians have been understandably preoccupied with our own Government's assault on human rights, involving imprisonment without trial or charge and the exclusion of judicial review. To do this, our Government has, uniquely, opted out of the most important part of the European Convention on Human Rights and declared (as it must) that the "life of the nation is at risk".

This extraordinary state of emergency has hitherto escaped the attention of a British public engaged in normal Christmas preparations and attempting to see Harry Potter. No doubt most people are relying on the previous, if contradictory, Government assurance that there was no reason to anticipate a terrorist attack. It is now clear that our own Star Chamber justice is simply another manifestation of shoulder-to-shoulder politics with the US. For this reason, if no other, it is essential to comprehend the awesome nature of the extrajudicial processes of criminal law now legitimised by the White House.

Arrest and imprisonment of terrorist suspects will be entirely by order of the President: no judicial process, no habeas corpus, no review. Detention is indefinite, there are no provisions for court bail. The identity of prisoners and their location may be kept secret. Legal representation may or may not be granted. If it is, conversations between lawyer and client may be wire-tapped without warrant or legal redress. Trial will be by military tribunal without jury and in secret. There is no right of attendance, no rules of evidence, no procedural checks. The tribunal may rely on anything it considers of "probative value". There is no established burden of proof. Verdict and sentence are by two-thirds majority. Sentence may be life imprisonment or death. There is no appeal.

These measures do not, of course, apply to American citizens whose constitutional rights to trial remain unaltered no matter what their complicity in acts of terror and violence.

The " executive order" relates expressly to foreign nationals, hundreds of whom have already been interned. British and European citizens in America are equally at risk.

The attachment to personal freedom enshrined in the finest constitution ever written is seen as a capricious and selective embrace when applied on a global scale and to citizens of other states. Unhappily, none of this will be lost on a world presently corralled in a coalition but increasingly alarmed at the images of maiming and slaughter by Afghan satraps under the umbrella of highlevel and massive bombing.

There is, of course, opposition in America itself. The legality of the executive order has been questioned and lawyers, liberal and otherwise, point to the successful prosecution of terrorists associated with al Qaeda in civilian courts with jury trial and security evidence legitimately sanitised.

Others point to the obvious reluctance that many countries will feel at extraditing terrorist suspects to face such a system of criminal justice. And if friendly and stable states do refuse to deliver up suspects, what steps will be deemed justified by America to obtain the bodies "dead or alive"? In this new world order, how far does the President's writ run?

There are also those who understand the true implications of the President's actions and the dangers that they will create. Curtailment of liberty always promotes reaction and, when the first foreign national goes to the electric chair after a trial which conforms to no accepted principles of justice, that reaction will extend far beyond religious fanaticism.

The atrocities at the World Trade Center were followed by a plethora of good intentions, articulated by the Prime Minister at Brighton and echoed around the world. On the agenda of wrongs to be righted, injustice to the Palestinians ranked at the top not only because of the conditions to which they had been condemned but because their agony formed the most dramatically obvious casus belli against the United States. Their suffering was not simply a cradle for terrorism, it was and is symbolic of the dichotomy between the promotion of freedom and the promotion of political self-interest.

The tragedy inherent in the presidential diktat is yet to unfold. As with all great tragedy the central character, America, is noble but possessed of a fatal flaw. In the United States this flaw is a refusal to understand that freedom is not divisible. It is not home and away; nor is it partisan.

It cannot be the legitimate pride of American culture while that same culture denies it to others. By decreeing the grossest restriction of liberty upon thousands, America, through her President, has provided as many hostages to fortune within its own borders.

? Bob Marshall-Andrews QC is Labour MP for Medway. Simon Jenkins is away